“Oh dear,” I muttered.

“Nah, you’ll like him. He’s a crotchety bastard, but one minute with my niece and you’ll see a totally different side of him. The guy’s a softy.”

“What if I can’t tell you apart?” I asked, only halfway joking.

“He has a full beard,” he said, giving me a smile. “You’ll know who’s who.”

“But what if that was a thing? What if he shaved and I really couldn’t tell you apart?”

“You think that’s even a possibility?” he asked incredulously.

“Well, I don’t know. You say identical, and I think identical.” The real worry must have bled into my voice, because Alex shook his head a little.

“My sister-in-law, Ani, is my best friend in the world,” Alex said in a low voice. “And I can tell you with absolute certainty that she’s never been attracted to me—what does that tell you?”

“That you’re not quite identical,” I said in relief.

“You won’t get us mixed up,” he said firmly. “Not even possible.”

“Okay.”

We were quiet for a few minutes.

“You’re seriously worried about it?” he asked finally.

“Not anymore,” I murmured sheepishly.

Alex laughed. “Bram and I used to try to fool people,” he said, still grinning. “Like The Parent Trap, you know?”

“I loved that movie when I was a kid,” I replied, then clarified. “The original version—not the remake.”

“Important distinction,” Alex said in mock seriousness.

“It is.”

He nodded. “When we were kids, we couldn’t ever figure out why we were never able to fool anyone.” He chuckled. “In hindsight it was obvious. Our personalities were so different, neither one of us could act like the other one long enough to make it believable.”

Over the next couple of hours, Alex told me all about his childhood. He and Abraham had lived with their birth mother until she’d died and they’d gone into foster care. After a couple of years moving from one home to the other, they’d been placed with Liz and Dan Evans, who’d adopted them. Liz and Dan had a biological daughter named Kate, who was a year younger than the boys, and they’d continued to foster other children after Abraham and Alex had been placed in their home, but they hadn’t adopted anyone else. When they were teenagers, Alex’s sister-in-law, Ani, had been placed with the Evans family, and years later she and Abraham had fallen in love.

“No wonder you like me so much,” I teased as the flight attendant came over the intercom system to tell us that we were beginning our descent into Portland. “Your family needed some new blood.”

Alex laughed. “I’m not even done.”

“There’s more?” I asked.

“My aunt and uncle also fostered Shane when we were teenagers,” he said, his voice a little stiff as we got ready to land.